


All Because of the Empire

by VoluptuousPanic



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Adulting, Cara Dune Needs a Hug Too, Din Djarin Gets a Hug, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Din Djarin Wears Space Carhartt (pass it on), F/M, Feelings, Friends to something else, Gen, Grief, In Which the Role of Cara Dune is Played by Lucy Lawless, Introspection, Learning to Fly, Peli Motto Is a Hug, Possible Fluff, Un-Betaed Because I Live Dangerously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:14:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29015655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VoluptuousPanic/pseuds/VoluptuousPanic
Summary: Din remained a stranger and the man she’d known for better than a year. Each time Cara saw his face was like meeting someone new, day after day, as he settled into himself. The first time was when he’d taken off the beskar, when she’d delivered him to Peli, who’d welcomed him with open arms and panic in her eyes at Grogu’s absence. The baby’s name still felt in wrong in Cara’s mouth, and she’d kept that from Din. She was sure he knew, just like it seemed to go without saying that he was aware she’d all but resigned her post on Nevarro...Theme music for this whole mess? Mogwai's "Every Country's Sun."
Relationships: Din Djarin & Cara Dune, Din Djarin & Peli Motto, Din Djarin/Cara Dune
Comments: 75
Kudos: 104





	1. Fett (Black Betty Bam-ba-Lam)

Cara looked at Fett, into the inscrutable black of his helmet visor, and back at the hunk of junk on the sand pad. It wasn’t right for her to make this choice, right as it was for Fett to present the limited options. A single option. No questions asked.

“Can you fly?” Fett asked, roughly grunting each syllable with a lilt of accent she still couldn’t place.

Cara nodded, letting her eyes travel over the flat black shielded hull, over the places where rivets and repairs had ground the plating down to raw metal that gleamed like Din’s beskar. The beskar that she watched him polish and wrap with near reverence, only to tuck it away in the same duffel it had been stored in only days before when Din had donned the inferior plasteel carbonate armor that was as disposable as the Troopers it barely protected. But what had gone down with Migs to get the Imp codes and a lead on Gideon was neither here nor there, just like Din’s wallowing and resignation. Cara was with Fett to see a man about a boat. Or check out a bounty bonus boat that Fett had relieved of its previous owner: a dubiously motivated gift that Cara knew Din would refuse if it stayed between him and Fett.

Fett was right. Din was a hunter, through and through. The sooner Din got back in one game or another, the sooner he could start to heal a little bit and move on, though the concussion would heal a hell of a lot sooner than the wound in that too big, gooey heart she’d given up pretending she couldn’t see. And a hunter, even one with one blown pupil, a permanent headache, and ringing ears needed a ship. Even if he was the kriffing king of Mandalore or whatever.

Cara sighed. She was better at driving, navigating closer to the ground. “Yeah. I can fly. Don’t like to, but I can get her up and out of here as long as I don’t have to leave atmo. What are the specs?”

“She’s a piece of druk, but she’s a beast,” Fett said. “She’s fast and the guns and grappler are clean, and has full quarters for two and a big enough hold for light freight or multiple quarries. The nav and carbonite units are new but the cockpit was retrofitted for an IG unit, so she needs some work to be comfortable for a copilot. I trust her provenance. Djarin can too.”

“Why are you doing this, Fett?”

Fett shrugged, poking at the sand with the lethal barb end of his gaffi stick. He looked like a man who had somewhere else to be. And Fennec was hanging around watching the time. Ironic, considering more than a week of Cara’s empty days had been squandered waiting for this weird rendezvous.

Fett’s helmet tilted up to indicate his line of sight was on the ship alone. “Djarin needs something to do if he plans to forfeit his rightful place. Or a mobile fortress if he plans to take it. He’s too skilled a hunter to believe that all is lost. The Child is safe and The Way is whatever path Djarin chooses. Bo-Katan will wait as long as he refuses to act.”

Cara nodded again, feeling Fett’s eyes on her back. There wasn’t a lot to say. She reached up to run a glove along a silvery weal of bare fuselage before yanking open the keyed grav-latch to release the gangway ramp. “Come on, _Black Betty_ , let’s get you to your dad.” The poor choice of words she muttered aloud tugged at her heart. A new ship was hardly a replacement. For Grogu or the _Razor Crest_. Cara choked it down.

Like any hunter’s transport, there was as little to see inside the ship as there was to say to Fett. The ship was old, pre-Imperial like the _Crest_ , but sterile, picked bare, and smelled of ozone cleaner, plasteel and grease, stale electrics and fuel. The _Crest_ , Cara realized, had smelled of Din, like leather and metal, sweat and life and tea dregs. Not unlike a drop carrier, but gentler and quieter, and not just because of the baby.She shook that thought away too to get where she needed to be and not waste Fett’s time. The ship layout made sense and the cockpit was self-explanatory. Cara knew the basics, but felt unexpected tension release when the ignition sequence started without a hitch and the thrusters turned and engaged for liftoff.

Fett’s signal crackled over the comm while she strapped in. “Take her up slow and mind the panel, Dune. I’ve got your six back to your base.” Fett’s _Slave I_ rose alongside in a swirl of dust.

“Copy,” Cara said, unable to resist looking past the panels to watch the pad and yard shrink in the distance as the ship rattled and groaned. She spun the thrusters to flight position, punched the throttle, letting out a long, low whistle at the rapturous suck of speed as she was pulled back into the seat. She hoped Mando would get as much pleasure out of taking this black birdie up for a first spin. But it wasn’t the _Crest_ , and he wasn’t Mando anymore. _Din, just Din._


	2. Tatooine Hangar Blues

“She’s a piece of druk all right,” Peli groused as she put down her torch and tugged off her soldering gloves to flip up the dark lenses of her brazing goggles. She squinted into the sun past the shadow that Cara cast over her work bench. Peli’s cloud of hair was wilder than usual and she had grease up to her elbows. “I suppose you should ask me if I think if it’ll make Din happy, but search me if I knew what would do that.” Peli turned her gaze on Cara and made a face Cara couldn’t read. “As if he’d know happy from a hole in the ground,” Peli muttered.

Cara stepped back from Peli’s bench and made way for Peli to come around out of the shaded portico into the violent midday brightness to have a look at the ship. Liking Peli wasn’t a necessary part of the haphazard happenings of the last last few weeks or the mutual avoidance of the bantha in the room. A bantha named grief. Grief for a little green brat who was safe and cared for, but lost forever. Cara shrugged off the prickle of loss. Peli didn’t need to be liked, but she could be trusted with grief, and for that, she had Cara’s unbegrudging respect. It was more than most people got. Of course it helped that Cara could see that Peli, for all her bluster and foul mouth, handled Din with a gentleness that made him honor his own dignity to earn his keep when he couldn’t do much else but eat and sleep.

“Hey!” Peli yelled, piercing and aimless, to rouse her retinue of pit droids.

Cara winced at Peli’s twang and watched the little droids crowd and chitter like bugs, then speed away to complete diagnostics, which was probably a good thing, though Din would come unglued if he got wind of it. If he could summon up enough juice to get angry. Cara sighed and shook her head over the state of things, and watched Peli make her rounds under the shade of the ship’s belly, cast a gimlet eye at the landing gear, shove her small, ungloved arm into an access hatch.

“I’ve got to get one off the little bastards in here to see what the kriff is going on in her guts. My arm’s not long enough. But other than this lube leak and being held together with gaffa strap she looks ready to jump if you’re a hunter with a death wish. She’s got an ugly kind of _jolie-laide_ about her. I think Din might be into that if we can get him to stop what he’s doing and come out to take a look. It’s a ship. Show me a man who won’t at least look at one.” Peli put greasy hands to her hips and grinned.

Cara laughed for the first time in weeks. Really laughed in that way that made her face hurt. “Can’t let him see your little helpers at work.”

Peli shrugged. “Aaaggh, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Why don’t you go up to the back hangar and see him if you can find him inside that propulsion turbine he’s been working on? He went in after breakfast. Haven’t seen him since. Kriff, he’s a good welder, even with that wonky eye. Who knew?” Peli sounded almost disappointed, but the curl of her lip told Cara otherwise.

***

Crouched in a squat inside the turbine, aglow under a fitful shower of sparks and slag, in a leather apron and welding hood, Din didn’t look so odd. He looked like a Mandalorian. Cara watched him until he blindly reached to shut off the plasma arc and rose slowly to inspect his work.

Cara came closer along the side of the small crane that held the heavy inlet and nacelle apart from the huge turbine. She looked up where Din was just a curve of welding hood, easing out of the void of the engine and back onto the maintenance platform deck. Moments later, the hydraulics engaged and the platform began a slow, shuddering descent. When it docked into the floor, Din greeted her with a tilt of head so familiar, she half expected a little green form to toddle down behind him. Only things were different, and she and Din were alone.

“Hey,” Cara said gently, testing the waters.

“Hey,” Din responded, his voice flat, natural, muffled behind the carbonate hood. In closer quarters, the hood wasn’t at all like beskar. And Din was just a man—not especially big, his body strong but not honed, neither young nor old. Din tipped the hood back. He still wore the modified goggles beneath, sluggish and sensitive eye protected from light as his noggin healed from the dark trooper’s assault. Rivulets of sweat ran from his dark hair into his shaggy beard and wetted the neck of the leather apron.The goggles followed the hood as Din pushed them up onto his forehead with a gloved hand. He squinted at the brightness. “You’ve been gone long enough. Heard you met up with Fett in Mos Espa.”

It felt like an accusation, and Cara’s elation deflated. Surprising Din at the best of times was a risky proposition. Now, it seemed positivity ill-advised, that setting out to meet with Fett and accept his offer of assistance on Din’s behalf had just been stupid. “Yeah,” she managed, hands on broad hips in as much a challenge as she could muster. Months ago, she’d have punched Din’s arm, or given him a shove. Now, nothing like that.

The tilt of head came again, along with an uncertain ghost of a smile and the pull of the dimple in his cheek. “Did you bring me anything?”

Cara felt the same kriffing stupid flip-flop in her belly that she’d last had the day Din had shown up on Nevarro before everything had gone to shit. That stupid feeling had come in unpredictable fits and starts since their first scuffle in the mud on Sorgan, catching her unawares at the worst possible moments. Like now when she couldn’t quite figure him out, and sometimes overwhelmingly, when he was too sad to do anything but stare at a wall.

Cara made herself look, meeting Din’s warm brown eyes, and the crooked set of his mouth that passed for a grin. He hadn’t moved, but wasn’t exactly expectant either. He’d hang that way often, waiting more than a beat too long. Cara supposed he always had, but behind the helmet, it had never been in public. Sometimes, of late, his strange pauses felt a lot like shyness, the same way words that once felt like pronouncements hit like questions when they didn’t come through the modulator. Cara hated that Din’s shyness brought out her own, and that Din always looked away first. But talking to him without the helmet had gotten easier.

“Maybe,” Cara said at last, gently teasing. If Din was going to set himself up to lose at this cosmic joke of a game of chicken, she might as well punch low to reach the triggers that hadn’t changed. “Heard you like things that go fast.” A smile crept up her face, and she let it. It felt good. It also didn’t hurt that Din responded in kind.

“Fett find you a ship?” he asked.

Cara leaned back a little, offering the challenge of a raised eyebrow since he was teasing too. “Fett found _you_ a ship.”

Din turned sidelong, like he was changing the subject, and removed the welding hood, goggles, gauntlets, apron, laying each neatly on the tool bench of the platform. He ran a hand through his wet hair and tucked an unruly lock behind an hear, then nodded slowly and surely as he wiped his palm on the leg of his dirty coverall. “Took her off of a bounty?”

“Yeah.”

Din sighed and turned Cara’s way again. He lifted his eyes. “Okay,” he said softly, like it was final and required a grave decision. It probably did.

Cara’s smile hadn’t faded. “Want to come see?”

Din nodded again, but less stiffly this time, the motion nearly reaching his shoulders, his posture easy. He scratched at his beard. “I need to clean up first. I smell like a Tusken.”

***

In the distance over the dazzling white of the Jundland Wastes, the horizon reddened as the two suns slipped lower and lower and the shadows of vapor spires near Peli’s hangars grew longer, their silhouettes darker. Cara let her head empty except for a fleeting thought that sunset and the hour or so preceding were almost beautiful enough to make grinding out a living in an arid drukhole like Tatooine worth it. She waited, the same as she had for Din any number of times, and kept girlish giddiness over the new ship at bay. There wasn’t a lot to be giddy about. For a smooth ride, _Black Betty_ was indeed a piece of druk.

The crunch of Din’s boots on the crystalline sand announced his presence beside her. “Peaceful, isn’t it?” Din asked.

“In ways I don’t want to get trapped into,” Cara sighed. “Know what I mean?”

Din offered a shaky exhale, as clear as if it were coming through the beskar modulator. “Yeah. I do.”

Cara could smell him, soapy, sharp and clean like cool water instead of his usual sweat and grease or the tepid recyc she’d used to rinse the dust and grime off when she changed at Peli’s before coming out to the hangar to find him. She let herself look again, her eyes traveling over him with more wonder than surprise that he was both newly shorn and clean shaven except for the mustache that she didn’t dislike. His thick hair lay like dark velvet and his neck was sunburned and tender against the open collar of his green shirt. Faded patterns in crude bluish ink marked his hands and forearms beneath unfastened sleeves, and a scar from a blaster burn marred one in a pale weal. She’d never seen so much of him as now. Something was different.

Din remained a stranger and the man she’d known for better than a year. Each time Cara saw his face was like meeting someone new, day after day, as he settled into himself. The first time was when he’d taken off the beskar, when she’d delivered him to Peli, who’d welcomed him with open arms and panic in her eyes at Grogu’s absence. The baby’s name still felt in wrong in Cara’s mouth, and she’d kept that from Din. She was sure he knew, just like it seemed to go without saying that he was aware she’d all but resigned her post on Nevarro to spend the last bit laying low between Mos Espa and Mos Eisley picking up small bounties, when she wasn’t in Anchorhead trying to figure out whatever the kriff it was that Fett and Fennec were doing at the Hutt fortress. She hadn’t said a word about any of it to Din on any of the nights they sat in the dark office or the cool dugout bunk room of Peli’s hangar, talking for hours about nothing, playing sabacc or dejarik, sipping cold tihaar, and not looking at each other, both without armor or weapons. But staying on Tatooine, with Din, or adjacent to him, seemed important, and it was about more than just making sure he was okay. But Cara needed to get back to Nevarro soon, or risk totally losing what little bit of stability she’d managed to carve out for herself.

Impulsively, Cara reached out a hand to touch the furred softness of Din’s drop crop, the same artless buzz she’d sported long ago as a new recruit. _Prepare for Freedom. Join the Rebellion._ Serving the New Republic sure as fuck hadn’t prepared Cara for any of this or for what looking a Mandalorian in the eye did to her. In this hot, golden magic hour of Tatooine dusk, three months seemed like an awfully long time to be gone and keeping secrets was as stupid as having feelings. It stung when Din initially dodged her touch, then burned altogether differently when he got himself together to lean into it just as she began to pull her hand away.

“Admit it. You always wondered what went on under the helmet,” Din said as he submitted.

Cara stroked again fleetingly and caught a flicker of a smile and the dimple in his cheek. “Suppose I did.” She let her hand hang on his shoulder and it felt right. Just as his sadness seemed exponentially lighter.

“This, every few months and not much else.” He huffed a laugh that didn’t quite make it past his chest. His dark eyes were on the horizon.

Cara’s hand fell away as Din’s callused fingertips lighted against her wrist. His touch was hot. She was hot, suddenly aware of all the things she’d never allowed herself to think about with regard to his face, the shape of him, the monastic privacy he’d maintained on the _Crest_. If she could redirect her attention, the things would stay where they belonged. Away. Far away, with all the other things she managed not to think about where Din was concerned. Cara looked at the horizon too, staying in her lane. “I see.”

“Yeah.” Din exhaled. He shrugged and changed the subject. “So she’s a Botajef 54?” His voice was cool and flat again, dispassionate.

Cara’s was too, but the spark of play was back in their conversation. “You gonna fly a boat I picked up?”

Din canted his head in response and something that looked a little like a smirk passed over his face. Cara got the feeling he’d lean on something territorially if there’d been anything to lean on. This felt like haggling over a bounty puck. Then he was serious. “I know who she came from,” he said. “Which means she’s a good ship. I don’t have to like it, or look a gift eopie in the mouth.”

“Ancient Mandalorian proverb?”

“Tusken.”

They stood quietly, not speaking. They were good at doing that together.

In the distant shimmer of heat, two speeders raced out into the Wastes toward the impound pads and hangars where ships awaiting service or space at the cargo depot sometimes berthed. Cara looked up as Din pointed at the glow above the distorted crimson orb of the nearer sun where a brilliant white streak rent the sky and then disappeared as a ship entered the atmosphere and dropped into the red horizon. His arm dropped too and he slid his hands into the zippered chest pockets of his overall bib, tilting his head back to look at the deep lavender glow overhead. Cara realized she’d seen him do this hundreds of times, gloves hooked into beskar cuirass and T-visor turned to the sky. Had there been the same crooked smile and look of almost wistful wonder on his face under the helmet? Had he always squinted one eye, or was that the concussion?

Cara fixed her gaze on the horizon again, where one speeder was returning, and crossed her arms over her chest. It was strange to feel her own body in soft clothing again after returning from meeting with Fett. Without spaulders, vambraces, gloves, belt and blaster, naked and light. Was it the same for Din without beskar? As she stared into the beautiful magenta nothingness, daring herself to resist looking at either sun, she felt Din shift beside her, his boot deliberately nudge hers. She didn’t move away, the same way she hadn’t on any occasion where they’d stood too close, holding each other up with unspoken agreement and shared strength that they couldn’t muster up alone. Cara would always have Din’s back. She knew without asking that he would always have hers too.

Din seemed more at ease, Cara realized. That’s what was different. He was less contained. Freer. He took up as much space again as he had in his armor and cloak, no longer all big eyes and wariness, like something wild that was struggling to trust the rules of domestication. She turned to face him and found him looking down at her, observing. The crooked edge of his broken nose and square jaw were harsh shapes in the dying light, and his dark eyes glittered under his heavy brow. Din’s face was as impassive as his helmet, expressionless. He still needed to work on that, but it made the occasional shock of a smile worth the wait. Kriff, he was beautiful. Now, an appraising tilt of his head silently asked Cara what was on her mind.

“Din, what’s happened? I’ve been gone a few days. Seems like I missed something.” Something big. Asking felt like wheedling, but she no longer expected him to bristle and shut down when a question cut to some place close to raw. 

Din’s shoulders raised and lowered, though the way he held himself after the shrug told Cara that whatever it was that he was going to tell her, he wanted her to know. He shoved his hands further into his pockets, fists against his chest, and his elbow grazed her arm. His voice was soft and even when he spoke, like he was slowly and carefully recounting a dream. “I was going to the Community with a grav cart of junk to pick up half a credit for Peli. There was a man. He looked like he’d been in the Waste with the Sand People for years. But he was too clean and sane to be living that way. He was all in white with a dark cloak, and his beard…” Din trailed off, freeing a hand from his pocket to touch his own face, smoothing down his mustache with thumb and forefinger. He collected himself to speak again. “…was white. He spoke to me.” He shrugged again and sighed. “He used Skywalker’s words.”

Cara felt the fuzz at the nape of her neck stand on end, a chill pass over her skin when she thought of the young Jedi and how he’d cut down a legion of Gideon’s dark troopers in a matter of moments, and how calm he’d been with the baby. With Grogu. And with Din. In the Rebellion, Skywalker’s reputation had preceded him. But for all the violence he’d unleashed, Cara had never expected him to be so quiet and strangely gentle, for him to be terrifyingly, divinely benevolent. She swallowed thickly. “May the Force Be With You?”

Din nodded slowly and exhaled, eyes to the sky again.

“What did you say?” she asked softly.

“And also with you,” he said. His words were nearly a whisper. “He was gone. Like he’d never been there. But I wasn’t afraid for him anymore. For Grogu. I was…sad. And angry at everything I don’t understand. Stuff I didn’t get to learn. Paths I didn’t get to follow. Futures I want no part in. It’s all because of the Empire.”

Din was right. Every choice made by or for either of them had been, in some way, informed by the Empire. It was the same for everyone Cara had ever loved, or hated. And the Empire and the New Republic, hand in glove, had cruelly shepherded them both here, into each other’s lives and grief. She’d learned enough about Din to know that the people and places he came from were as lost as her own on Alderaan, and that the baby had been Din’s first and only tether of belonging to anything but his creed. The Empire had taken both, in one way or another, and had given him a destiny he didn’t want. Din had the shorter end of the stick. There was no comfort beyond the fervent belief his child was safe.

Cara wanted to touch him then, to soothe herself by soothing him, to touch the tender nape of his neck and smooth her hand over the length of his back. Places she shouldn’t let herself think about. She unfolded her arms and touched the tool loop of his overall at his hip instead, hanging her fingers in and giving a gentle pull. “And?” she asked.

Din huffed a laugh that sounded like disbelief. He lowered a warm, rough hand to cover Cara’s. “I came back here and stripped that turbine so Peli didn’t have to do it.” He sighed. “There is more than one Way, Cara. And more than one path in any creed.” He shifted a little as if there was also more that he wanted to say, but couldn’t find the words or the way to get at them. “I miss him,” he said softly after a few moments.

“I know. I do too,” Cara whispered. She turned her hand in Din’s grip simply because holding his hand felt like the right thing to do. His hand wasn’t so much bigger than hers. She’d held it enough, arm wrestling, and later in those moments when he begged to be left for dead. But it wasn’t until the beskar had been set aside that she’d held Din’s hand palm to palm, bare, desperate, intimate. Now she held his hand because he was her friend. She beat down the untoward thrill she’d felt at his touch only moments before. What was happening now was real.

Din was the same in his armor as out of it: stalwart, true, good. Grumpy. Calculating. Lethal. But he was also soft and open in a way that Cara was quite certain wasn’t new. It had always been there, and Cara chastised herself for not suspecting from the beginning that there was such a gentle man inside the shell of beskar that held him together. Now, like Din’s hands and face, the gentleness was out in the open. She was also sure he’d grown more comfortable, that he’d begun to let his guard down in the days she’d been away. In the wake of Din’s quiet encounter with the man at the scrapyard, Fett’s magnanimity, and even _Black Betty_ , were anticlimactic.

“You okay?” she asked after a few moments, as much for herself as for Din.

Din squeezed her hand and let it go. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

Cara believed him when he answered. Din had willingly accepted care when it was obvious he’d needed it, and had been tolerant of it the times that she or Peli had intruded to fill silence or hang around when it was clear he didn’t need to be alone. But it seemed his days of needing anything more than the bare essentials were numbered. Cara didn’t want to still be in Mos Eisley and suddenly find he’d just gone, especially now that there was a new ship. She’d had enough of that with his comings and goings on Nevarro, where she needed to return. Now was a good enough time to tell him as any, and staying much longer would soon be pointless. “Din, I need to go home soon.”

“You need a ride?” he asked. His voice was gentle and there was the graze of knuckles against her hand.

“Are you going to put your shiny hat back on?” Cara asked cautiously.She couldn’t imagine him in the cockpit or arriving back to Nevarro, going anywhere, without his armor.

Din exhaled a laugh. A grin raised the corner of his mouth. He turned his face away into the night to answer. “Don’t know yet. I haven’t seen the ship. It might not go.”

“It’s a little late to send her back. The previous owner is pincers up and your code is already in on the registration.”

Din turned then, into Cara’s space, with all the physical imposition a man in New Republic surplus coveralls from the spaceport PX could muster. He shifted into a familiar, casually menacing stance, weight on one leg and hand at his hip. It was thrilling. And ridiculous. Now that dusk was in full force, Cara brazenly looked him over. Their eyes met and Cara felt the warm glow of something. It was love of some kind, respect, and a drukload of other stupid shit that they were never going to talk about. And it was glaringly mutual. And it was fine, even if it always hung messily between them. She reached out and knocked her fist to his chest, touching rough canvas instead of beskar.

Din caught her hand in his and gently pushed her away. “You flew with my chain code?” he asked incredulously, like it was a secret that affronted him.

Cara could hear his cool, gruff humor, that he was winding her up. It was clear now that she could see his face and how the set of his mouth changed. She’d missed this dance. She shrugged and grinned. “Like kriff I was going to fly with mine. I’m not licensed to pilot.”

“Dank farrik, Cara. I have a reputation to maintain.”

She laughed aloud at Din’s eye roll and sudden twitch of feigned exasperation. “Do you want to see it or not? I can call Fett.” The threat was empty.

Together through the lengthening shadows and rapidly waning heat of second twilight, they slowly walked from the perimeter line of Peli’s hangar lot to the pad near the office portico where Cara had set _Black Betty_ down. Cara heard Din’s grunt of laughter as they rounded the corner of the front hangar, well before the bird was completely in sight.

“Oh, Maker, she is a piece of absolute shit!” Din grumbled as the motion-activated flood lights powered up when they tripped the proximity sensors as they neared the ship. He warily circled the ship under the sulfurous glow. “What is this? Scan shielding? I thought these were all green and yellow.” He ran a palm over the matte black anodizing on the hull. The oil from his skin left a dark streak. He slapped the metal, and it sluggishly shimmered in the dark, flattening again, smooth like an egg where the weathered coating was still black. He was in his element, comfortable and easy as he opened and closed access panels, looked into the engine intake ports, and squatted before the main body of the hull to stare down the barrel of a laser cannon. The ship wasn’t the _Crest_ , but it seemed she would do. “What’s wrong with her?” Din asked suddenly, rising to stand.

“Nothing,” Cara answered and laughed as Din cut his eyes toward her with a slight turn of head. “She handles like a brick, but that comes with the territory. I don’t think the intent was precision or sex appeal.” It struck her then that the smirk on his face had always been under the helmet. She watched him suck in the the center of his lower lip, release it, and give a small nod. That motion was familiar as well. She settled her hands on her hips and let her eyes track over him again as he looked up to the cockpit. “Open the hatch. See if you like her. If you don’t, I’m leaving in your ride.”

“Does she have a name?” Din asked as he manually keyed his chain code at the deployment hatch access, then inelegantly smacked the panel with the side of his fist to lower the gangway.

“I was calling her _Black Betty_.”

“ _Black Bantha_ ,” Din deadpanned with a quick slice of smile that disappeared as quickly as it had bloomed. His shoulders hitched with a silent laugh that made Cara thrill inside again. He stepped onto the ramp and up into his ship.

Cara turned to look into the floodlit night and the detritus of Peli’s hangar yard. She sighed, warm with the glow of feelings, and spun on her heel to follow Din.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, that might have been a Ben Kenobi Force ghost. Then again, maybe it wasn't.


	3. Know When to Fold 'Em

“Let me see your eye.” Peli said. Then again with more urgency and exasperation. “Let me see your eye!”

Cara watched Din struggle halfheartedly, hands stilling around the sabacc deck he’d been shuffling in the space between their plates.

Peli caught him by an ear, and then more gently, framed his square jaw with a small solvent reddened hand to tip his face up into the glow of the meditorch she held between her teeth. Peli turned his head this way and that, looking into one eye and then another until she roughly patted a cheek and ran an affectionate hand over his shorn hair. “Okay, you’ll live,” Peli barked.

Din scowled and passed the sabacc deck to her when she offered a renewed motherly glare. Cara had the distinct impression this nightly ritual playing out in Peli’s kitchen was a primitive exercise of Peli’s need to mother and Din’s need for touch.

“It almost looks normal. As if any part of him is normal. He’s got more bacta than blood.” Peli resumed her seat, pocketing the meditorch in her coverall, and cut the deck to deal another hand. “Y’all eat!” she said sharply as she begin to spin cards across the laden table.

Cara took a peek at her cards and grinned. Two pairs and a run. She reached back to her plate for another bite of whatever it was that Peli was feeding them. Tatooine fare was sometimes weird at best, but everything Peli managed to pull together was always so kriffing good. It was past ironic that moisture farm hydroponics were the finest Cara had eaten since Sorgan. It was probably true for Din too, since he and the baby usually subsisted on Republic MREs when he could get them, Empire MREs and protein packs when he couldn’t, and whatever creepy-crawlies the little one had managed to catch and gobble down. At Peli’s house, they ate well, if simply. Tonight it was clear that Peli had made a special effort. They had meat in addition to Peli’s usual starchy, heavily spiced staples and the always varied selection of tender greens and jewel-like fruits from the hydroponic wall opposite the table. Someone must have paid up.

Peli set up the draw pile in the center of the table beside the bread. Mealtime sabacc didn’t make for polite conversation, but it gave Cara and Din each ample time to drink at each other, and for Peli to size up their hands based on their continued interest in eating. Most nights, Peli succeeded in besting both of them and making Din talk about something, or at least grunt in response to a good yarn. Tonight though, Din was on the offensive. The speed and relaxed confidence of his plays and draws were almost cocky. His free hand kept him anchored, working at the edge of the table, against the curve of a glass, burnishing the handle of his spoon, blunt fingers and bitten nails drumming on the tabletop. It was a wonder to Cara that he didn’t show everything in his face. Instead, his hands were the tell, even when it was just the two of them. Had he done this in his gloves?

Cara couldn’t remember. The distraction of Din’s thick wrists and trying to figure him out instead of watching her own kriffing draw had made her hand go bad. “Oh…phassk,” she muttered and fluttered her lips in a rude sound. She folded early to finish her plate, then leaned back on the bench next to Din so that she could see his hand.

Din flashed his palm quickly, showing Cara his cards before laying them on the table face down. It was a good hand, and his draw had made it better. He paused to eat and have a long sip of the weak malt brew that Peli poured in abundance. Cara was still surprised at the almost childlike politeness of Din’s table manners, though she supposed that a lifetime of eating alone could make for fastidious. How Din sprawled in his seat, when he returned to his cards, however, made Cara think of his strut and beskar commanding the space in Greef’s cantina. How Din stood and sat when it only made sense to call him Mando incited fear and trepidation. Even if his weird, hostile chastity existed to keep others at bay.

Din’s eyes lifted and met Cara’s, flashed back to his cards when Peli drew, and returned. Something in his gaze felt new and Cara let her eyes slide away to his open collar. Though it had happened hundreds of times when they’d worked together or simply wiled away the hours, watching patrons slink to and away from the bar, or watching Nevarro’s skugs and sleemos ooze through the alleys, meeting his eyes had always been imagined. Seeing his eyes was differently disarming. Still naked and calculating, but inviting and full of a quiet humor. Cara nudged his knee with hers under the table and smiled. Din looked at his cards again. The dimple in his cheek flickered and deepened with a ghost of a grin that he covered with a lean into his palm.

Peli’s gaze was suddenly on them, kind and appraising. Peli’s eyes moved back and forth and Cara felt hot, seen. In a way that made it feel important that both of her hands were on the table. She felt Din shift beside her, the weight of his leg falling away from hers, his posture slowly straightening until he sat stiffly, the way he had the first few times Peli had dragged them to her table. But there was something soft in the way Peli smiled, her head tilting, eyebrowless forehead relaxing.

And then Peli cooly laid her hand face up on the table with a smug, shit-eating grin. A pure sabacc. Cara sputtered with a cough, then laughed aloud at the subterfuge and improbability. She collected the remaining cards and Peli’s hand to shuffle for another round.

Din grunted in disbelief with a roll of his eyes. “Bomb,” he exhaled in a mock huff and passed his cards over, shaking his head as heavily as if he’d been wearing the helmet. He sprawled again, knees wide under the table crowding Cara.

“I guess you’ll both be going soon,” Peli said halfway through play on the next hand. Her drawn face was gentle. Kind and motherly. “I hope I’ve done right by you even if what we’ve got here can’t make up for the love you had for the little womp rat.”

Cara watched Din’s mouth flatten into a sad little grimace that tugged at her heart. She knew it tugged at Peli too. They’d talked about it enough: Din, Grogu, nature and nurture. How everything always came down to the Empire: war, grief, kids given up or left behind or taken in. Peli had lost a husband and two sons. Cara had chosen sterilization over the slim possibility of unintended consequences with a handful of men who’d amounted to even less than a waste of time. Talks had been the same with Omera on Sorgan. The conversations that happened between women stayed between women. Din didn’t need to know the particulars. Cara came back to herself and looked at Peli.

Din nodded, head tilting to the side has he considered Peli’s words, cards held to his chest. His voice was soft. “I hope I’ve done right by you, too, Peli.”

“Baaaah, You wouldn’t be bunking in my hangar if you weren’t so kriffing decent.” Peli rose suddenly from her seat, bluster to hide that she was moved.

“I’m decent?” Din asked incredulously.

“You’re full of shit is what you are,” Peli muttered, her back to them as she busied herself with something at the counter, small body bustling with something she pulled from the chiller.

Din smiled then, dark eyes alight and mouth open, full of straight white teeth. His shoulders shook with single hitch of laughter that ended as soon as it began. Cara couldn’t fight her own smile and found herself leaning on an elbow, gazing at him intently. Din looked back, his features smoothing, his eyes gentle and unchallenging. Peli’s return interrupted the mutual observation that was going on too long.

Peli laid a plate of cold, orange fleshed meiloorun on the table. The fruit was fanned out in neat little slices for the grabbing. “The baby liked these,” Peli said.

Din nodded, his mouth flattening again, though he seemed less sad than before. “I like them too.”

“So did my boys,” Peli said softly. She patted Din’s hand and sat.

Cara shuffled the cards. Things felt sweet and there was nothing to say.


	4. So Tonight That I Might See

An hour passed, and then two with more sabacc, a pot of caf, a nip of tihaar, and frank conversation about provisioning, acquiring fuel cells and weapons, scavenging or buying the essentials that Din would need whether he returned to hunting or chose to chase loftier goals.Peli knew a guy in every line of work. Din was more comfortable with what he could do and connections he could make in secret. And Cara had a bantha shit detector that went off the second Din mentioned trading for parts and tools with Jawas.

“Do it on the level, Din. Right now you’ve got the credits,” Cara said, her eyes on Din. She knew the kind of arsenal he was thinking of. The _Crest_ ’s munitions cabinet had been a kriffing candy store.

Din rubbed the back of his neck and looked toward Peli. His eyes were tired. He looked sleepy, even. Cara knew that the work of existing in the world, being seen, was hard for him. But it was nice to know that when he even thinking about blowing shit to hell, he lit up for the briefest moment.

“Marshal’s right,” Peli said.

Din stifled a yawn, then folded his arms behind his head and leaned against the wall. He shook his head, eyes on the table where the cached deadwood of sabacc lay in a disordered pile. The last two hands had been feverish and Peli had let Din and Cara fight it out. Din shook his head slowly. “How’m I going to get an Amban on the level? Do you know a guy for that too?”

Cara could help line up the permits for new small arms as soon as tomorrow. List the _Crest_ as a write-off, file a claim. Maybe even get a standard issue MK, though it was a little discreet for first impressions. Din needed to go by the book if he was going stay with the Guild as just a man, rather than a Mandalorian.

Peli grinned and knocked back her thimble of tihaar. “I think you know a guy. He’s up at Anchorhead.” With a broad, toothy grin, she rounded up the cards with both arms, neatly aligning them to put them away. It was the worst idea in the sector, too bad to play out even here after dinner as humor, ship or no ship.

Din groaned and scrubbed a hand over his hair. “Dank fucking ferrick, Peli, I am _not_ going to Fett.”

Peli grinned again as she slipped the cards into their box. “He sent you a ship. Cleanest piece of druk I’ve seen in years. You should at least send a thank you note.”

Cara sighed. “Fett doesn’t need to hear anything. But I know a guy. He’s on Nevarro.”

“This bodes well.” Din sighed.

“Just a weapons guy, ex-Rebellion. No one special. And no worse than Fett. Greef knows people too.”

“I’m gonna hit the rack,” Din muttered after another yawn. He stretched slowly and luxuriously, arm across the back of the bench grazing Cara’s neck. He was warm, his shirt soft.

If he were anyone but Din, his stretch would be a come on. Cara thought of the virile spread of beskar he’d offered on that transport out to the krill swamps on Sorgan, and how much she’d liked looking at him, how his medium-sized body seemed powerful and larger than life. That night’s display had been about soldiering, even with the shade of vanity that gleamed through his armor. Din’s vanity _was_ his armor. Inside it was the the man who sat beside her, soft-spoken and prickly, fading but not exhausted. Cara turned her head to look at him and found him looking back, head tilted in a familiar way, though what was on his face and in his eyes was simply soft and sleepy. Impulsively, Cara reached down and patted his bent knee where it touched her thigh. The gentle, hesitant squeeze he gave her shoulders felt good enough that she nearly shrugged out of it, but she tightened her hand on his knee where her touch had lingered. If he were anyone but Din, she’d know what to do, how this would play out. With Din, the simplest answer was usually the right one. He was saying goodnight, sweetly and intimately, but just goodnight. It was nice, another little stoke to the glow there since the long afternoon. It didn’t have to mean anything, and was probably better that way. It meant more to Cara that she didn’t need to convince herself and the sweetness of knowing they’d met halfway on this conclusion felt better than awkward shit she’d regret later. The were both adults and could both kriffing see to themselves if it came to that.

Peli’s eyes were back with laser focus. “Well, go if you’re gonna! Or am I gonna have to put a hook on the wall for you to hang yourself here?”

“I’m going.” Din stretched again, bringing his arms back to himself. He arched his back and patted his belly with both hands before sitting up straight, and Cara heard the grind and protest of middle aged joints as he pushed up to maneuver himself from under the table.

Din dipped his head and Cara looked up. The smile they shared underscored the druk that had been in her head. This was good, this thing that was nothing. “Sleep good,” she said. She meant it.

“You too.”

“Don’t let the door hit your skinny ass on the way out!” Peli yelled as Din disappeared up the short flight of steps to the surface. “Men,” she grunted and shook her head, cloud of curls drifting and mouth in a grimace. “He’s getting too skinny.” Peli rapped her knuckles on the table sharply, then stood from her chair, turning her back to busy herself at the sanitizer with dishes, crumbs, and a crust of bread that went into compost.

“He’s okay, Peli,” Cara said to Peli’s back.

Peli turned, leaning on the counter with her arms folded. Cara met her eyes. Cara liked Peli most when she was serious like this, when the bluster and screeching settled. Cara supposed if her own lot had been different and her body had been smaller, too small for the physical requirements of heavy weaponry, she’d had to have found other ways to get by. Her volume would have been higher, too. Screaming at everything was just a different way of not letting anyone get too close.

“I never thought I’d say I’d be sad to see him go,” Peli muttered. “But I know he needs to move on, or he’ll get stuck here forever like the rest of us. A kriffing Mandalorian is the best mechanic I’ve ever had on my payroll. Who fucking knew?” Peli sighed and pursed her lips in a sneer. She turned again, facing the portal window over the work surface with its little row of succulents. “I miss the kid,” she said softly.

“Din does too.” Everyone missed the little green menace. Grogu. Cara breathed the grief away again and wriggled out from the bench to help Peli with the last of the work, even though Tatooine made short work of everything. No waste of water, food, labor. Only alcohol seemed to flow plentifully. She accepted Peli’s offer of another shot of tihaar with the precious addition of cool water that made it go cloudy and opaque in the glass. She knocked it back and savored the aromatic burn. It was time to turn in. “Thanks for putting me up again, Peli.”

“Thought for sure you’d be following Din out to bunk at the hangar tonight. With the way things seem to be going.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“I think it’s an excellent idea, little missy. But I didn’t tell you that.” Peli topped off her own glass again and looked at Cara, the strange bald ridge of her brows raised. Peli passed the bottle over. “Now get on out there before he falls asleep. And don’t get too drunk to do what it’s clear y’all need to do. I’ll send my crew out to the ship again while y’all do…” Peli waved a hand. “…whatever. We’ll get that IG interface out of there.”

****

“Thank you, Cara Dune.”

“For what?” she asked muzzily, thought the sweet fug of tihaar. For something that could be repurposed for degreasing parts, it was a smooth, soft drunk that just dulled the edges. She felt Din’s hands come into her hair, then stroke over her ears as he shyly pressed his forehead first to the top of her head, then to her forehead, as he gently tipped her face up.

The night was cool around them in the near silence of Peli’s yards. Nothing but the whisper of sand and the creak and groan of loose metal somewhere, moving with the gentle wind. Din’s body was warm, and he felt bigger, more solid than Cara had ever imagined. Why had it taken so long to hug him? She shivered as he aligned the bridges of their noses and breathed in her space, warmth and alcohol.

“Din,” she whispered. “Did you just kiss me?”

“It’s still happening,” he whispered back, sliding a hand to the nape of her neck, the other at her hip. 

“It is.” Gingerly, Cara brought her hands up to cup his face, and very gently, without breaking contact, negotiated his mustache to press her lips to his. She felt his shocked inhale and then a tender press back. “You haven’t done this before.”

Din shook his head, his brow and the tip of his nose grazing hers. “No.”

Cara kissed him again the same way and felt his lips answer, the pressure achingly soft. “But you’ve done the other things?” she asked. Suddenly it didn’t seem awkward or improbable that his experience was limited. It was easier than working around bad habits.

Din exhaled slowly against her cheek and nodded. “Yes, some of them, but not often. What has happened was always…” He paused. “…transactional. I’ve seldom been in a position to provide. In the covert there were no attachments without the intent to provide. It is not the Way.”

Cara pressed her lips to his again and guided him through a slow, deep kiss, stroking the soft nap of his hair. He responded easily and trembled in her arms. His body was as ready as hers was, hard against her through their clothes, but he kissed as if they had all the time in the world. She let him. For more reasons than being halfway to drunk.She would not kriff this up.

“I have nothing to offer you,” Din whispered breathlessly when the kiss was over.

“You have you. And a boy you love who is safe and with the people he comes from. And a kriffing ugly ship, a camtono full of credits, and the farking throne of Mandalore. For the record I’ve got my own bucket of credits and I don’t want anything to do with that stupid sword or the special chair that goes with it.”

“Me neither.”

“But I want you.”

“If you’ll have me as I am.”

Cara caught Din’s face in her hands and smoothed her thumb over his wet mouth, tracing the bow of his upper lip at the edge of his mustache. She wanted to look, just look, to stare into his beautiful face and follow his strong, hawkish features with her eyes. Gently, she touched the scar at the bridge of his nose, the spaces at his jaw where there was no stubble, his skin as smooth as a boy’s. She traced his heavy brows that were knit together with concern, and at last the wide, soft curve of his lower lip.

“What’s wrong?” he asked softly.

“Nothing.” Cara felt a slow, soft smile bloom on her face. “I will have you, Din Djarin.” She'd been more sure of few things. 

****

“Stars,” Cara whispered, sighing long and low as she came down with tiny flutters, still under Din, holding him tight, knees hitched high against his ribs as he panted in her arms. He’d made her come, more than once, something that usually didn’t happen with men. He wasn’t men. He was Din Djarin. She stroked his smooth, sweat slicked back and pressed a kiss to his temple. He withdrew slowly, making them both shiver anew, pressing his forehead again to hers after their slow, tender ride that had many stops and starts and gentle detours for instruction or to rest. The most recent detour, the crux of the matter and denouement, had lasted only a few moments and was not particularly gentle. Cara had no complaints, though she would be sore in the morning. So would Din. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d trusted someone enough to be powerless to do anything but cling to them and let them take her, let alone know that person was doing the same, holding on for dear life through each teeth rattlingly deep thrust and grind and the tender motions that came afterwards. It was one thing to find oblivion that way. It was another entirely to be in that place with someone and want to hold them once it was over.

Din dragged his knuckles down the side of her face and she opened her eyes to find him looking down at her, his dark gaze serious. She kissed his knuckles and a glimmer of a smile lit his face. He lowered his eyes. His hands smelled like her. So did his face. She lifted her head to kiss his lips and he leaned into it with everything she’d taught him to do with his mouth. She’d never been kissed so gently. Or eaten so hungrily with less skill, had instruction met with such determination and enthusiasm. Din was a pro with his hands, and an easy, generous lay for a man so shy with his own body. It was also clear he knew what he liked, and Cara was more than amenable to the ways he asked for her to help him get it. But being with Din like this was far more serious and intimate than helping a friend out.

They disentangled their bodies slowly and lay side by side for a long while, Din on his belly with his head pillowed on folded arms, Cara facing him. She smoothed her hand over his head, followed the shell of his ear with a fingertip. She let her fingertips trail over his skin again, tracing the watery patterns of faded ink over and underneath his arm to his ribs. Touching him was like petting a loth-cat, how he would stiffen at first and then relax into it with something like a sigh. She watched him screw his eyes shut as her touch tracked over the sensitive skin at his armpit.

“You okay?” she whispered, though being quiet was pointless. They were alone in a domed dugout in the Tatooine night. 

Din nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered back. He turned his face into the space between his arms. “Does it ever stop?”

“Does what?”

“How good this feels.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been too far past this part. I’d usually be telling you to get out now.” Cara admitted. “Come here.” She opened her arms and Din moved into her embrace as naturally as he’d opened her legs to slot his hips between them a few moments ago. She pressed a kiss to his forehead and felt his warm palm squeeze her breast in response. “Thought for sure you were an ass man, Din Djarin.”

“I like it all, Dune,” he murmured against her neck. Fingertips tracked over her ribs before his hand settled at her waist.


	5. Morning Light | Empty Air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Above the planet on a wing and a prayer,  
>  My grubby halo, a vapor trail in the empty air,  
> Across the clouds I see my shadow fly  
> Out of the corner of my watering eye  
> A dream unthreatened by the morning light  
> Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night_
> 
> Yes, I just quoted Pink Floyd. Sorry, not sorry, but it feels right for the possibly-too-much-fluff that's happening here.
> 
> Also, in the spirit of production notes, I'm really into the idea of Din's beskar unders having that nifty hood that we saw in set photos. That is all.

Well before dawn, Cara woke alone in the warm chaos of Din’s bunk. The worn and mismatched linens were in disarray, but pulled over her with care. Humidity hung softly in the pre-dawn chill, just enough water in the air to tell her Din had washed, and probably in hot water. Cara could smell soap.

She opened her eyes to the dim grayish light, to the rustle of stiff cloth and Din standing in the small anteroom, standing hooded and in stocking feet to dress methodically in the dark. She watched him hook the galluses of his flight overall over his shoulders, pull over the coarse gambeson, effortlessly tuck the long length of fine bantha wool that made up his cowl, bend and contort himself to fasten the ballistic vest that protected his belly and sides beneath the beskar. He stepped into his boots and pulled the greave straps tight. The beskar went on slowly with as much reverence as it had come off, lower limbs first, then gloves and vambraces before the cuirass and pauldrons. Belt, bandolier, and blaster went on last before he unfurled the free end of his cowl to fall down his back over the dark saber at his hip. There was no mirror, and he wouldn’t have used one had there been. He dressed and armed himself with more care and purpose than Cara had ever needed, even in the times long ago when she’d tried to be pretty or ready for inspection. Din stared into the visor of his helmet for a long while before he took it from the table and slipped it on over the dark hood that covered his ears and hair. Cara realized her heart was hammering when Mando turned toward her, sleek, menacing, beautiful. And at ease.

“I didn’t hear you,” Din said softly, his modulated voice almost a whisper.

Cara rose on an elbow and resisted the urge to cover herself when the sheet slipped down. After last night, there was nothing left for either of them to see. She still had Din’s eyes this morning, even through the visor. “You going somewhere without me?” she asked.

“I didn’t want to wake you yet,” he answered gently, turning his gaze away with the diffidence Cara had learned to read for what it was. His answer wasn’t a lie or even a half truth. It simply was what it was. Din was funny like that, and always had been. “Do you want to come with me?”

She sat up, faded sheet and blankets pooling at her hips, and combed her hands through her loose hair as she considered Din’s question. She could feel his eyes again, and heard something like hope in his voice, and it was too farking early to be laid open like this. It was still dark outside. Din was funny like that, too, and likely always would be. “You’ve never asked me that before,” Cara said softly.

He took two steps closer to stand in the portal doorway the bunk room, filling up the space. Cara could hear his wheels turning, and his answer came out gently and thoughtfully. “I should have asked you a long time ago.”

Sleepily, she looked him over. Half formed thoughts moved through her head. What would have happened if he’d asked? On Sorgan? Or on Nevarro? “You’d have gotten the same answer. Depends on where you’re going.” She shrugged and smiled at the small motion of Din’s helmet. There was a smile under there too. Almost unconsciously, she loopily spun her index finger and was rewarded with Din making a slow turn. He’d found all his pieces, at least the ones that mattered for now. She gave a wolfish whistle.

The helmet tilted and he hissed a sound of feigned exasperation, but the flirtation was broken. He spoke with his usual quiet intensity. “I need to take the _Bantha_ up. Jump over to Chenini to calibrate, and then over to Genosha and back. Should only take an hour or so. We’ll be back before Peli puts caf on.”

“Din, do you need an astromech?”

“If I do, I’ll tell Peli when we get back.”

“More like if.”

Din sighed and threw his helmeted head back. “I know what I’m doing, Dune,” he said to the cieling.

Cara grinned as she rose from the bed, bare as an egg. She knew what she was doing, too. And that there was a thing they were doing together though she didn’t quite know the shape of it yet. She stalked to Din over the bare stone floor, and pressed her body against him to feel again the places they fit together as she slid her hands up to his pauldrons. He exhaled slowly and took her in his arms. The leather of his gloves smoothed possessively over her backside as her breasts flattened against his cuirass. “Do you want to talk about what happened?” she asked. She pressed her face into his cowl and inhaled to smell his skin, soap, clean garments. _Din, just Din._ Sometime soon, he’d again smell of sweat and leather and the funk of soldiering that she couldn’t seem to get off of herself either.

“Nope.” His gloved fingertips traced the breadth of her hips and thick waist and the cleft of her backside before his hands settled again to cup her ass with open palms. 

“That makes two of us,” Cara whispered. In answer, she passed a caress across his helmet over the place his cheek would be. She folded herself closer as his helmet touched her forehead, then lowered to her shoulder. She touched the cool beskar curve with both hands and he curled his body around hers.

“There’s still hot water if you need it,” he said gently.

“Walk me to Peli’s after. I’ll suit up there. I’m not going anywhere with you without a weapon.”

“Okay. Make it snappy.” He patted her hip and released her to find her clothes where she’d left them and make her way to the small bathroom.

Cara rinsed her mouth and rubbed her face ruddy under the cold artificial light. After a lick and a promise with fresh water and a clean towel, she covered herself enough to venture outside. She made a mental note, if they spent another night together, to luxuriate in waking beside him, to see him in the morning light. This was the druk they wouldn’t be talking about. Between now and then there was the other kind of druk. The kind that needed to get done. They were good at that.

****

Din punched the comms unit to power up. “ _Bantha_ to control, requesting lane,” he said almost absently as he bent over the console to link it with his vambrace, then keyed a set of coordinates in the nav comp. 

Cara couldn’t remember ever having heard him talk to control, give a callsign. Kriff if she could remember if she’d even been off the ground with him in the _Crest_ , but as she watched him she could see reason for making memories of prepping for departure or long, quiet stretches in hyperspace. He was doing something at the instrument panel, unscrewing and replacing a knob on a drive lever, gloved hand twisting the threads tight. The knob was beskar and she’d seen it before held in small green claws, a tiny world, and the last piece of the _Crest_. It looked right amid the scuffed diamond plate and grinder striated metal of the _Bantha_. Din looked right too as he dropped heavily into the pilot seat, legs splayed wide as he made himself at home in the cockpit in a way he hadn’t last night. He flipped an array of switches, one after another, and the flight and weapons instrument clusters came to life, ghostly little lights powered by primitive fuses that glowed barely brighter than the dim suggestion of a sunrise on the dark horizon outside. Din looked pleased. She’d been scared as shit when she punched in his code and lit up the day before to bring the _Bantha_ home.

Cara made her way further into the cockpit and bypassed the jump seat. It was reserved indefinitely. Instead, she slid into the copilot seat, now that there was one, and turned to face Din. He made a motion with his right hand, pointing, gesturing across his body, his silent communication loud and clear that she should buckle up. She had an inkling that their departure might be messy and she fiddled with webbing and latches until the belt held in the appropriate places and didn’t hang on her belt or boobs. “You too, bucket head,” she said gently, parroting his gesture.

Din gave a sharp exhale through his helmet modulator as he shrugged into the five point harness, settling it over his armor with more grace that Cara had struggled into it.

An interruption came over the comms, smooth and detached. “Good morning. Mos Eisley Control Two, requesting chain code.”

“Copy,” Din breathed, and slapped his vambrace. “Transmitting.”

“Mando! Didn’t know you were back.” The voice at the other end was suddenly less smooth and more familiar, one that Cara knew by sound from the cantina. A small man with a funny name that she couldn’t recall in the moment, but Peli was cool with him at any rate, so it was good enough.

“Yeah,” Din agreed with a huff. How many times had they met over the last months? The man would never know. Din’s secrets were safe with Cara and Peli. And Migs. What Fett and Fennec and Koska and Kryze had or hadn’t seen didn’t matter.

“Like a dunefox, man. Good to have you dirtside.”

“Yeah. Good to be here. Keep my lane open. I should be back within the hour.”

“Lane is clear and holding.”

“Copy.”

“Come on, birdie,” Din murmured almost tenderly as he powered up the engines. His helmet moved as he oriented himself, glove hovering a moment over the console before he found the landing gear controls.

Cara knew that hushed tone now, and could feel that the ship was just as quick to make herself Din’s as she’d been the night before. She’d hovered the same way for a few seconds, too. “Talk dirty to her, why don’t you?” She grinned and pulled her feet up into the seat, arms over her knees.

“It’s a thing,” he stated softly, then punched the engines to burn without spinning them for flight, pulling the throttle straight back, not bothering the vagaries of a gentle takeoff and slow ascent into a concentric orbit. He was going straight up. The _Bantha_ vibrated and groaned in protest, her metals and polymers flexing under the roar of the turbines as the little reactor powered up, but she held. This was the kind of vertical takeoff an assault ship was made for, though Cara had never seen Din put the _Crest_ through similar paces.

Cara gripped the armrests of her seat and closed her eyes against the dizzying disappearance of horizon. A few nauseating seconds of gravity later, she felt the back of Din’s glove graze her upraised knee. “What?” she asked with mock irritability as her contents settled. She remembered then that neither of them had eaten. She’d barely had a sip of water.

Din smacked her calf, but his voice was gentle. “Don’t fuck around and miss this.”

Cara’s eyes opened to the black curve of Tatooine looming through the viewport, limned with an arc of cerulean and gold, and studded with the twin suns.As they rose higher and at last banked into orbit, dawn chased across the surface, black turning to russet and sandy ochre. A single wisp of gauzy cloud hung in the atmosphere like pink silk. Sunrise above this rock was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Other than the memory of Alderaan’s oceans and forests. She looked to Din, but couldn’t pin his gaze, couldn’t tell if it was out the viewport or on her. Pink and gold reflected off his beskar, glowing warmly where he sat. His helmet moved and Cara was sure that she was in his sights. She couldn’t look away.

“Am I ever going to see your face again?” she asked. Suddenly it was important. 

The helmet tilted and he nodded after a pause. “Of course. What’s between us is between us.”

“And we don’t have to talk about it?”

“Yeah. No.” There was a modulated huff and Din squeezed her hand. His fingers were bare.


	6. Sail Your Ships Around Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Come sail your ships around me  
>  And burn your bridges down  
> We make a little history, baby  
> Every time you come around_
> 
> Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, "The Ship Song"
> 
> I'm sad it's over.

“I’ll leave the light on for you.” It was the best Cara could do in the time they had left together to tell Din how she felt. It was good they were talking out in the open. They did their best truth telling looking up at the sky in one way or another. Kriff knows they’d had enough days up to their ears in the truth of each other in the beautiful dark no place of hyperspace. Shacked up together in the tin can of the _Bantha_ , where they’d done little more than be quiet together or apart, drink endless cups of tea, and fall into each other when they weren’t sleeping or assembling weapons. There was no past or future in those moments. The words that were so simple meant so much in her head when she’d found them the night she’d lain beside him, half reading a tactical manual for rail gunnery, half watching him sleep. In the open air on the secluded roof of her little house on Nevarro, the words felt as dumb as the time she’d asked him what he was thinking as he gazed empty-eyed and bare-faced into that first dusty dawn on Tatooine. Cara had hijacked her own non-conversation.

It was like Din not to miss a beat. He followed her out of the window and onto the the flat tile veranda under the blue night. Somehow in the past minutes of awkwardness he’d shed helmet and armor and was there under the blue night in his black undershirt and overall, as raw as he’d been at Mos Eisley. His tone was soft, and he spoke slowly enough that she wondered if he was choosing his words as carefully as she had. If he was, he didn’t sound quite so full of druk. “I’m not asking for that,” he said gently. “I won’t be a tie to bind you when I don’t know when or if I’m coming back.” He paused and sighed. “Don’t wait for me, Cara.”

Cara didn’t look at him as he tilted his head to look up into the sky. She couldn’t bear it. But she didn’t move away when he drifted closer and their bodies knocked together. She let him turn her toward him to meet his dark eyes. They were soft and deep and he wore something like a smile. She reached up and ruffled his hair. It was just long enough again to be unruly, scruffy like his beard, both shot through with silver that she liked the look of. Truth was easier still when she was touching him. And she gave him the truth of ages, what she’d lived with long before she’d met him.

“Din, I’m not waiting for anyone. I have shit to do.” It wasn’t an excuse. For the first time, it came out with a grave certainty that she believed as surely as she knew she loved Din Djarin. If he was anyone else, she’d have have accused him of being presumptuous. She’d never waited for anyone. Ever. Except him, during those months on Tatooine she’d stood by while he found himself again. “I also have responsibilities…” Cara huffed a laugh, because it was absurd. “…and whatever kriffing respectability politics Greef wants out of me. I’m surprised he hasn’t asked me to cover my tits yet.” She folded her arms over them then and shook her hair back.

Din’s hand passed over her forearms, fingers hooking in her top between her breasts. She yielded and he stepped closer to peer down into the dark space, his breath warm and soft on her skin. It was a promise of something else, something that would happen later before he left, but now wasn’t the right time. She took his hand and kissed his knuckles, held his hand against her cheek for a moment. It was more sentimental that she wanted to be. Din was a sap too.

Cara looked up into his eyes again. The look he returned was open, naked, accepting. The one she’d always seen through the helmet. His other hand drifted to her waist and she closed her eyes with the sensation, opened them again. “All I’m saying is that as long as you’re out there doing your Mando business, the light is always on for you.” She swallowed. “There’s not a hole in my life, Din. And if there was, I wouldn’t ever ask someone like you to fill it. There’s too much of you for that and beskar is heavy shit. You’re feeling weight right now that I can’t help you carry. If you need somebody beside you for something, then you call and I come running. The same as always. And in the meantime, I’m here, doing the shit that I need to do to get by.”

“I don’t understand what you’re getting out of this. Not waiting.” He sighed and then his body hitched with a bitter little laugh. “For me.” His head tilted and she saw the half-smile again.

She ghosted her fingertips along his cheekbone, stroked the stubble of his beard with her thumb and watched his eyes flutter closed as a sweet, tired smile bloomed across his face. “This,” she said softly. “The chance to want someone and have the fact I don’t actually need him not be a thing. The chance for it not to be a thing that he doesn’t need me either. Just knowing we’ve had this time together and that we’re here for each other is enough.” She paused, and shook her head. The words were all wrong and there were too farking many of them, but he was wasn’t pulling away. She could feel him breathe, his forehead grazing hers. “I didn’t mean it that way. Din, I…. People like us don’t settle down. There would be nothing there for us if we did. And it’s not like either of us are young. We…just keep going and keep on meeting in the middle. The light’s on for you whether you want it or not. I need it to be on for me because I can’t see out there without it. It’s gotta be my light, Din. Not yours.”

He kissed her forehead and dragged her into his arms. “I know.”

“We fit together,” she whispered against his bare neck, folding herself into his arms to let him hold her in that way that made her feel, just for a moment, small and protected. “And you’re the fucking Mand’alor.”

“Seat’s empty for you for the same reasons your light’s on for me.”

“Yeah, but,” Cara muttered. “Metaphors are bantha shit.”

“You’ve got shit to do,” he whispered. “What little I’ve got is still yours.”

“Then I’ll take you for everything you have, Din Djarin. Except that kriffing sword.” She wrapped her arms around him and flattened her hands to his back, to feel his ribs, feel him breathe.

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Cara knew those words were coming. Had known since the moment Din had accepted Peli’s help and Fett’s gift of the _Bantha_. Cara had managed to ignore the inevitability during the last weeks of struggle and kriffing fun that they’d had on Tatooine, assembling an arsenal and supplies. What they’d shared in the long now of hyperspace as they crossed the galaxy from Tatooine to Nevarro was something else entirely. That intimacy held no promises. “I know,” Cara whispered. “We have all night before then.”

“We do.”

****

Cara watched the final burn of the _Bantha_ ’s white hot engines wink out in the morning sky as the ship left atmo. She’d done a good job of not feeling a lot when she’d helped Din suit up and do a final check on his gear. She didn’t walk him out to the launch field to see him off. She just kissed him goodbye before he shoved on his helmet. She sent him out the door and went on her own way down the dusty little street, past the fruit vendor, straight to her office. Like she’d see him again at the end of the day. The time for remembering his face in those moments and the words they did and didn’t say would come later when she was alone. Greef’s appearance with a cantina thermos of caf and two cups was a welcome interruption.

“Where’s Mando headed? He just took a fistful of risky pucks and didn’t say much. Just like always. He mentioned some fool’s errand out at Jakku, but it sounded like BS.”

Cara sighed and took the cup of steaming caf that Greef offered. If Din had stopped by the cantina to see Greef on his way out to the field, she hoped he’d picked up his own order. “He’s following a sketchy lead to Yavin 4 to try to see his kid. Then on to Mandalore.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, I know.” Cara finally looked away from the horizon to Greef’s kind eyes.

Greef poured a second cup and bent to set the thermos on the pavement between their feet. The way he moved showed his age. None of them were young, and possibly never had been. Greef’s kindness, though, was dependent on his years and experience. “Why didn’t you go with him? You could have told me. I would understand.” He sounded like a father. Maybe he was one. She should find out.

She shrugged. “It’s not my place. His fight can’t be mine. I’d lose myself in his story. Taking Mandalore won’t bring Alderaan back or end the Empire. My place is on this side to try to make sense of all the druk that’s left over. That’s my story. If he needs me, he’ll reach out. In the meantime, I’m here.”

“What if you need him, Dune?”

“You know neither of us are like that.”

“Doesn’t hurt to pretend you are. Don’t make an old man hurt for you both. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not pleased you’re staying. There’s a place for you here.” He patted her spaulder with a broad hand, and then the pat became a fatherly arm around her shoulders.

Cara relaxed into it. She took a sip of caf. “I know. It’s mine and it feels good.”


End file.
